Paul Fennell

SECURE Act

SECURE Act

As you know, the goal of our nation’s retirement system is to create more opportunities for American workers to save and to make it easier for employers to start and maintain benefit plans. With this in mind, Congress just passed, and the President signed, the SECURE...

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The Power of Re-Enrollment

The Power of Re-Enrollment

Auto-enrollment and automatic contribution increases have proven to be popular and successful retirement plan design features that get more people to save for retirement. A little less known is “re-enrollment.” It’s another important tool we have to help encourage...

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Why It Matters Before How It Works

Why It Matters Before How It Works

Some business owners may come to you asking for information on a 401K or a cash balance plan. They may know of these from prior experience, or friendly advice, or they may have done their homework about different retirement plans. As retirement plan experts, we have...

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Why Permitted Disparity Matters

Why Permitted Disparity Matters

When it comes to retirement plans, there are many ways to distribute a company’s profit sharing contribution. It may be as straightforward as a proportional, or “pro rata,” share to each eligible participant or it can be based on a formula that considers age or other...

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Payroll, It’s More Than a Detail

Payroll, It’s More Than a Detail

Every retirement plan design begins with a study of a company’s payroll. It’s the essential information that drives thinking around how to optimize tax and savings potential for both business owners and their employees. Once a plan is installed, we rely on payroll...

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Helping participants understand RMDs

Helping participants understand RMDs

In the retirement plan business, we naturally focus on helping clients accumulate wealth. But at some point we turn our attention from accumulation to decumulation. After all, everyone will reach the age at which they no longer contribute to their accounts and begin...

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Compliance Essentials

Compliance Essentials

At a glance, compliance tests assure that every retirement plan is producing a meaningful benefit to rank and file employees and that it demonstrates a level of fairness in the benefits those same employees get as compared to the benefits achieved by owners and other...

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Use Benchmarking to Your Advantage

Use Benchmarking to Your Advantage

In some ways you can divide clients into two groups - those who are primarily motivated by lowest cost and those who seek value. That doesn’t necessarily align nicely with retirement plan benchmarking since it’s much easier to compare and report things that are more...

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